Blogging
From Abroad

Washington, Seattle, Vancouver, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Philadelphia and now New York City.

This is the list of cities my girlfriend Doris and I have visited since we arrived here, a little more than 3 months ago. When Eric Jaeschke spent his semester abroad in Vienna, he managed to visit 12 European countries. I don’t think, we can keep up with him concerning the total numer of countries but we’ll try hard : )

Either way, actually I should write something about New York. As you found out in the last post, two students from Italy, Lorenza and Giulia, as well as Doris and I got a ride to Philadelphia on Friday. On Saturday evening we took a comfortable commuter train to Penn Station, Manhattan. Again, we found a couchsurfing host, again perfectly situated. He lived just a couple hundred yards away from the Penn Station.

His name is Mijail and meeting him was another amazing experience. He took us to the rooftop of his building where we had an awsome view on the Empire State Building.

On the next day we wanted to meet with friends from our university, the BOKU in Vienna. Since the New York Marathon took place at the very same day, it took some more time to reach our meeting point in the Central Park than expected. At least I had the chance to take a nice photo of the fall colored athmosphere.

We don’t know who he is. But obviously he comes from Austria. A nice snapshot of the New York Marathon.

Times Square and…

...the Times Square, again.

We and our friends from Austria. I, Jakob, Thomas, Markus, H.W. and Doris.

There is another advantage of couchsurfing. It can happen, that your host takes you to a nice bar and an even nicer club later. And this happened to us. So we already partied in the Big Apple! Luckily, we didn’t stay up too long and so we could get up early on Monday. After breakfast we went to the Staten Island Ferry. We had excately zero interest in visting Staten Island (although it is probably a really nice place ;) and took the ferry because it is free and it passes the Statue of Liberty.

One still can go to the island and visit the statue. But it costs money and once you’ve arrived there, the monument is probably too large to capture it on a picture. So the ferry was a really good decsision.

I love windy boat photos with Doris : )

The next target was the financial district. Including the NYSE…

...Wall street, of course, and…

...the famous wall street bull. Not really a bull market right now, is it? Still a very nice motif.

Ground Zero.

I knew, that ground is expensive in Manhattan. I did not know, that this leads to creative parking solutions, hehe.

Finally, the four WVU Students and our host. I, Giulia, Doris, Lorenza and Mijail

Okay, so now I know New York City. What do I think about it? I really loved the huge variety you can explore within just a few squaremiles. Be it Upper West Side, East Village, Greenwich Village, Central Park, Financial District, Chinatown or Little Italy. All of these neighborhoods have amiable features.

My girlfriend and me actually booked a room for the turn of the year. And we are really looking forward to this New-Years-Eve-New-York-City-Times-Square-Madness : ))